Scientists Discover Viruses can be Infected by Other Viruses

Scientists in France have discovered a virus infected with a second virus in a cooling tower. Based on the sequencing of the infecting virus's genetic code researchers believe there might be an entire class of viruses that infect other viruses.

Normally viruses can only be seen in an electron microscope. The infected virus was a large mimivirus, a class of viruses large enough to be seen in an optical microscope. The infecting virus has been named 'Sputnik'

The discovery is likely to reopen the debate over whether viruses should be considered to be living organisms. Traditionally they haven't been because they cannot metabolise food and do not have their own cellular structure.

& given their DNA I would say that right there supports they are a living organism. They're just acellular. The "do not have their own cellular structure." part isn't entirely true, there are so many viruses out there, some are nothing more than a piece of RNA inside of a protein shell.

Viruses attack cells by inserting their DNA into host cells and taking overthe protein making machinery to make viral proteins. Then they assemble thenew parts into new virus particles and the only way to get out the cell nowis to explode the cell.

Viruses don't have the machinery to directly metabolise. They must insert their genome into the machinery of a cell, causing the infected cell to unwittingly reproduce the genetic code of the virus and translate it into parts of the viral envelope. This uses the cell's resources, and often kills it eventually.

Whether a virus is alive or not depends on your definition of life. But viruses are little more than genetic code in a husk. A virus is like a USB-stick: inactive and pointless unless inserted into a 'real' device.

viruses are as much a life form (living organism) as much as a parasite is, which is no less a life form than a human is... virii undergo evolution at a blinding rate compared to most living organisms and they use us and other hosts to facilitate both its evolution and its very survival...

into new cells. They do not undergo mitosis or binary fission. they are reproduced when their genome integrates into a host and then the host translates the genome. viruses do not have any nutritional demands, they do not actively maintain their structure, or anything else that living organisms do. they are not *living* I hate it when lysol commercials say they 'kill' viruses.

is find a "Good" virus that attacks the various virus's we have and does no harm to the host after it finds all the "Bad" ones. Of course knowing how nature works if there is a virus that kills a bad virus then it is probably worse.

I remember sitting in a college biology class, and being informed that we were going to cover the life cycle of the virus. We had already been told that a virus was a non-living object. I remember thinking that the concept of a life cycle of a non-living structure made little sense to me.

It is very interesting to see the forms that virii and prions take, and wonder why it is that they do what they do. If they are not living then why are they driven to parasitize cells and use them to propagate their own genetic code?

I think we have a lot more to learn about the nature of life. Anyway - this finding is bound to be beneficial to researchers.